Parallel
by bubblegum days
Summary: This is the proof that when one good thing crumbles and sours, another one blossoms and flourishes. Trina/Robbie, Beck/Jade.


**A/N: **Not much to say. Just some geometric metaphors and drawing some comparisons between Jade and Trina. Just a teensy ficlet that wouldn't leave me alone, so I wrote it when I hit writer's block on the story I'm trying to write.

* * *

Trina sits on a seawall in California, her legs crossed. Her feet are arched to keep her high-heels on them, her toes pointed to the sky and her shoes hanging down from them. A fat artificially-flavored bana Popsicle sticks out of the corner of her mouth and Robbie sits next to her, his hands trembling and hair wet. They're on a first date, the sun dipping down low, their bodies slick from the swim they were just on.

Her left high heel drops from her toes.

"I'll go and get it," Robbie offers.

Trina places a hand on his trembling one and flashes a smile at him. "No, don't. You'll kill yourself." This is true, because they're seven feet up and there are shiny rocks littering the shore.

"Well, that's very selfless of you," Robbie smiles. His hands shake a little harder because the Trina that he knows is the most selfish person in the world, and would've pushed him into the slimy rocks and grimy sand to retrieve her expensive, brand-name shoe.

Trina says nothing, just sucks off the last part of the Popsicle and spits the stick into the sand, the red mark of her lipstick on the wood sparkling until the water swallows the stick and washes the lipstick off.

She leans over, grabs Robbie by the cheeks, and gives him the first kiss they deserve: honest, heartfelt, and for what feels like forever.

Similarly:

Jade sits on a seawall in Florida, her legs sticking straight out and Beck's arm wrapped around her shoulders. The sun is going, going, gone, replaced with a full moon and a handful of stars that shimmer overhead and light up her eyes. But she picked a bad position to sit and bought her shoes a half-size too big, because they both droop off her feet.

Beck says nothing, just jumps over the seawall because they're only four feet up and there's nothing but damp sand. He retrieves her shoes, even puts them on her feet for her. He hops back onto the seawall and doesn't say a word.

It's the last date they'll ever be on, because:

"You could've said _you're welcome_."

"But you didn't say _thank you_."

"Oh, come on. You know I'm grateful."

"No, Jade. No, I don't."

Once again, Beck's hopping off a seawall. He walks away, retreating back to the hotel room that he's sharing with Jade, because they're in Florida for a movie they both scored kinda-big roles in and damn it, damn it, damn it, Jade's tears litter the sand for what feels like forever.

.

Trina calls Tori, who's vacationing in some European country with their parents, to tell her about how happy she is, how she's found the boy that she wants to marry, but she doesn't provide a name.

Similarly:

Jade calls Tori, and Jade doesn't care where Tori is, just calls her and tells her that Beck and Jade are done and finished and dead but not in the literal sense. Jade tells Tori all of this and she cries, tears rolling down her cheeks, and she cries even harder when the line goes dead because Jade doesn't respond for five minutes after Tori says that she's not going to help them get back together again. It reminds Jade of that nursery rhyme: _and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again . . ._

.

Robbie proposes three years later, in the middle of a fancy Italian restaurant with the worst garlic bread either of them every tasted. People applaud them.

Similarly:

Beck and Jade meet again on the set of a movie three years later. Jade never left Florida, but the movie's filming in Spain. They reconcile for three glorious months, their fingers touching each other's skin and setting fireworks off in their senses, fires growing in Jade's eyes, but Beck leaves because Jade didn't change one bit (_she didn't have a chance to change, because she just got over him when he reappeared_). They still have to walk on the red carpet together, though. People applaud them.

.

Trina cries when she finds out she's pregnant. She cries because she's happy, her tears hitting the tile of the bathroom that's adjacent to her bedroom in her tiny apartment. It sounds like rain, and Robbie comes bursting through the door, happy to save her from whatever is wrong with her.

Trina shoves the test in his face and Robbie smiles, smiles so wide.

Similarly:

Jade cries when she finds out she's pregnant. She cries because she doesn't know what to do, and she's sitting on the seawall again, her hand over the fabric of her black shirt. She can't feel a bump, can't feel a baby, but she knows that the bastard (by the strictest and oldest of dictionary definitions) child is living there.

She calls Beck, who's back in California, because she temporarily forgets that they're not together anymore. Beck tells her to get it removed-get it removed, like a cyst or something-and hangs up the phone.

.

Their child, who's a boy that they name Rex Alexander Shapiro and has Robbie's thick, curly hair and Trina's facial structure and eyes, is unusually good at geometry. Named after the puppet that died in a fire years and years ago, Rex tells them tales of how he wants to be an architect and build the prettiest of buildings.

He shows them math problems: two parallel lines with a transversal,

corresponding angles that are equal because they lay on the lines. He tells them the postulates and theorems that provide the reasoning. His eyes sparkle like Robbie's do behind his glasses when he tells tales of his and Trina's relationship, and he smiles like Trina does when she talks about how Robbie proposed to her.

Honest to God, their child's geometric talk flies above their head. But it doesn't stop them from being any less happy, any less proud.

Similarly:

Their child, who's a boy that she names Ulysses Frederick Oliver because she loves that name and his initials spell out UFO, is unusually good at geometry. His initials technically means spell out "unidentified flying object" but she thinks of it as "unidentified frightening object" because that is exactly what having a child that looks like Beck, sounds like Beck, acts like Beck, and practically breathes Beck is like. And no, Ulysses is never going to really feel loved by his mother.

He shows her math problems: two parallel lines with a transversal, corresponding angles that are equal because they lay on the lines. He tells her the postulates and theorems that provide the reasoning. His eyes sparkle like Beck's did whenever he thought about seeing his name up in lights, and he smiles like Jade used to whenever Beck wrapped an arm around her.

Honest to God, her child's geometric talk flies over head. She's drunk all the time, and she can't make herself feel proud, because he looks just like Beck and nothing, nothing at all, like Jade.

.

_Rex and Ulysses never meet, but they're mutually aware that their parents once had friends in high school that were each other's parents. They just don't know about each other._

Rex asks his mom what happened; his mom smiles sadly and say they fell out of touch and then tells her son to get ready, they're going out for dinner to celebrate his father's promotion. He does so.

So, similarly:

Ulysses asks his mom what happened; his mom snaps at him, "We fell out of touch," and flips her cigarette box open, yelling at her kid to bring her the lighter. Ulysses does so, and Jade lights a long cigarette, smoke forming something of a demented halo around her head.


End file.
